Saturday, August 17, 2013

Ogun State Government is truly shifting focus to agriculture in the
belief that it would be good for all Nigerians to cultivate the land for
products that would serve local and international consumption.
That is why the government has expressed displeasure at the colossal
waste of scarce resource on the importation of food that the country has
capacity to produce, a development that has impacted negatively on the
nation’s economy as it fuels domestic inflation, displaces the local
production and creates rising unemployment in the nation.

Governor Ibikunle Amosun, while declaring open this year’s National
Council on Agriculture and Rural Development meeting with the theme:
“From Farm to Table: Developing Agricultural Value Chain to create
Wealth and Jobs and Assure National Food Security”, held in Abeokuta,
Ogun State, had lamented that “it is rather unfortunate that despite the
abundant agricultural potentials and the comparative advantage that the
nation as the production of many crops, Nigeria still imports over
N1.3trillion worth of wheat, rice, sugar and fish every year. Our
country, Nigeria, is said to be the world largest importer of United
States’ hard, red and white winter wheat and second largest importer of
rice’’, the Governor said.

He added that for Nigeria to become an agricultural industrialised
economy, agriculture should be seen as a viable business venture and
very well funded.

Therefore, due to the effort of the government to give more attention
to agriculture, a Model Farm Estate aimed at resuscitating the farm
settlement concept of the defunct Western Region of Nigeria was
established at Owowo near Abeokuta, to encourage youth involvement in
sustainable agriculture.
This is just one of the many projects the government is embarking on,
and in the nearest future, the state will become the country’s food
basket.